SOURCE: Pound, Ezra. “The ‘Introduction’ to Sonnets and Ballate.” In Pound's “Cavalcanti”:An Edition of the Translations, Notes, and Essays, edited by David Anderson, pp. 11-20. 1932. Reprint with notes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

In the following essay, originally published in 1932, with notes by Anderson added in 1983, Pound describes Cavalcanti's genius and his own attempts to render his style in translation.

Cimabue thought that in portraiture           He held the field; now Giotto hath the cry           And all the former fame is turned obscure; Thus hath one Guido from the other reft           The glory of our tongue, and there's perchance           One born who shall un-nest both him and him.(1) 

Even the qualification in the last line of this speech which Oderesi, honour of Agobbio, illuminator of fair pages, makes to Dante in the terrace for the purgation of Pride, must be balanced by Dante's reply to Guido's father among the...